Comments on: Grab the nearest book

By: pilgrim

pilgrim — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:21:19 +0000

The nearest book-ish object to hand, I now realise, was O’Reilly’s Dynamic HTML, the Definitive Guide – but I’m sorry, that doesn’t count as a book, in my book. So, from the nearest Proper Book to hand:

I slapped Dudley on the back, hard. “I think that Vice sergeant had it wrong. This is no homo hangout, is it, Mr Brubacker?”

from James Ellroy, Clandestine.

By: bert

bert — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:50:43 +0000

Some rather severe editing at 12.35, Eszter.
Does the sentiment “It’s entirely possible I’ve missed the point, and if so I do apologise” really need to be disemvowelled?
All the best, and – as always – in my own name, Bert.

By: Martha Bridegam

Martha Bridegam — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:00:35 +0000

“The next it appeared to be only what, in all likelihood, it was: a kind of retraction.
Zimbalist struggled for the next hour to understand that move, and for the strength to resist confiding to a ten-year-old whose universe was bounded by the study house, the shul, and the door to his mother’s kitchen, the sorrow and dark rapture of Zimbalist’s love for the dying widow, how some secret thirst of his own was quenched every time he dribbled cool water through her peeling lips.
They played through the remainder of their hour without further conversation…”

Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. The game in question is chess.

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:01:12 +0000

Among competing self-replicating molecules, therefore, the competitive advantage will go to those specific molecular structures that induce, not just their own replication, but the formation of structures that protect them against external predations, and formation of mechanisms that produce needed molecular parts by the chemical manipulation of environmental molecules that are unusable directly.

The cell is the triumphant example of this solution. It has an outer membrane to protect the intricate structures within, and complex metabolic pathways that process outside material into internal structures.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:00:08 +0000

“It has also been suggested that lower-power (FR I) radio sources might be related to BL Lac objects (Urry, Padovani, and Stickel 1991). This picture is consistent with the known properties of the two classes, their luminosity functions and space densities – BL Lac objects have weak emission lines and show little evidence for cosmological evolution, as with FR I sources. It is clear that the parent population of the OVVs must be different from that of the BL Lacs, and indeed the likely candidate is the FR II sources (e.g., Padovani and Urry 1992).”
From Bradley Peterson, Active Galactic Nuclei.

By: Joshua W. Burton

Joshua W. Burton — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:43:10 +0000

"When t' < t an antiparticle has been created by φ(x'), then absorbed by φ†(x') at time t with a corresponding amplitude θ(t' - t)φ†(t,x)φ(t',x'). In both cases charge increases at x and decreases at x' independently of the causal propagation. In the case t > t', instead of speaking of an antiparticle at x' subsequently absorbed at x, we may say that a hole has appeared at x' to be filled at the later time t."

By: Grand Moff Texan

Grand Moff Texan — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:18:41 +0000

Very late to the party, I see.

“The old poet did not fall into that last feeble error of despising truth, because it was so large and potent as to have been observed by others before him.

The fact that deð is disyllabic is no proof that it is plural doað – it may be doið singular: cf. 1058 for a close parallel. Changes of number are not to be so lightly accepted in Beowulf as Williams would have it [perhaps deð should be amended to doð].”
.

By: W. Kiernan

W. Kiernan — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:25:27 +0000

Could I thus sail, and see, and thus await
Fearless for the power of thought, without thine aid? –
There is a sleepy dusk, an odorous shade
From some approaching wonder, and bhold
Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold
Snuff at its faint extreme, and seem to tire,
Dying to embers from their native fire!

Modern Library Giant “John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley – Complete Poetical Works” Oddly this copy doesn’t have a publication date or copyright information in it, but it does have two page 123s; the second falls in the middle of “The Revolt of Islam”:

‘I was no longer mad, and yet methought
My breasts were swoln and change:- in every vein
The blood stood still one moment, while that thought
Was passing – with a gush of sickening pain

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:05:16 +0000

With respect to Bert at 12:35, I think this highlights the fact that age 123 is having a pretty rought time of it at the hands of authors and publishers alike. Isn’t it time that someone spoke up for the needs of page 123? Page 123 should be a place of daring action, incandescant metaphor and finely-honed, muscular prose, not the arid hypothesising and inane pretension it currently suffers. OK, page 123 can’t resonably expect to sport gems like ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man . ..’ (unless the editor’s miraculously managed to write an implausibly long introduction) or ‘Reader I married him.’ (unless someone’s abridged with extreme prejudice). But I think it’s time we started the Page 123 Support Group to promote better more interesting writing on page 123. Forget about the lush erotica of page 17, the metaphysical profundity of page 398 and the slickly choreographed action of appendix 1. Page 123 needs our help!

By: dr ngo

dr ngo — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:11:05 +0000

Rizal’s hopes for his country’s future were tremendous; but moving towards a hope is a practical matter, an affair of step by step. This he knew. He might be an idealist, but he was a practical one; and his immediate aims were modest, resting in his certain conviction that the Philippines were not by a long way ready to stand on their own, even in conjunction with a more developed country.

Austin Coates, Rizal: Philippine Nationalist and Martyr Hong Kong: OUP, 1968.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:09:23 +0000

By doubling up a very thin line, so that it is the same thickness as the one to which it is to be joined, it is possible to make what is referred to as an improved blood knot. In this case, the number of turns in the thinner line should be reduced, otherwise there will be twice as many as in the thicker one, and that is not necessary. (Although it may be difficult at first to work out the number of reductions, this can be done by trial and error.)

Knots, Geoffrey Budworth.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 06:34:45 +0000

"I would just take an idea and draw on it from a real experience I had had on the streets. I had to work on my mic skills to be more of a part of the group's performance. And fortunately I stumbled onto the nasal thing." From Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies by Brian Coleman. These sentences fall within a quotation of Louis Freese (B-Real of Cypress Hill).

By: Will

Will — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 03:27:57 +0000

It is commonplace that psychotherapists are crazy, and that this is probably what led them to their jobs. “What still strikes me,” one woman I interviewed said, “is I’ll go to a party in New York, and inevitably the craziest person there is a psychiatrist. I mean the person who is literally doing childish, antisocial things, and making a fool of himself.

M. Neil Browne and Stuart Keeley, Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, Sixth Edition.

By: aa

aa — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:58:42 +0000

On Oct. 27, 1828, at Malinniki, province of Tver, Pushkin wrote the famous dedication of his narrative poem Poltava, and it is thought that this dedication (sixteen iambic tetrameters rhymed abab) is addressed to Maria Volkonski:

    To you—but will the obscure Muse’s voice
    touch your ear?
    Will you, with your modest soul, understand
4 the aspiration of my heart?
    Or will the poet’s dedication,
    as formerly his love,
    in front of you without response
8 pass, unacknowledged, once again?
    Do recognize at least the measures
    that pleasing were to you of yore
    and think that in the days of separation
12 in my unstable fate,
    your woeful wilderness,
    the last sound of your words,
    are the one treasure, shrine,
    the one love of my soul.

The draft and the fair copy are headed with the words, written in English, “I love this sweet name” (the heroine of Poltava is called Maria). One would like to see for oneself this draft (Cahier 2371. f. 70r), where a canceled variant of l. 13 is said to read (see Bondi, Acad 1948, V, p. 123):

Sibíiri hládnaya pustínya
Siberia’s cold wilderness …

By: Zora

Zora — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:19:27 +0000

ka.li [with macrons over the a and i]
n. Spine, spindle, rod, string, as used to thread things upon, as flowers for a lei, or candlenuts for a torch; long vine or runner, as of sweet potato. Cf. Kaili. Kali i’a, string of fish.

Hawaiian Dictionary, Pukui and Elbert